{"id":4687,"date":"2014-08-12T20:44:41","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T00:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/?p=4687"},"modified":"2014-08-12T20:49:31","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T00:49:31","slug":"war-comes-home-major-general-harold-j-greene-trinity-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/2014\/08\/war-comes-home-major-general-harold-j-greene-trinity-son\/","title":{"rendered":"War Comes Home: Major General Harold J. Greene, Trinity Son"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"maj-gen-harold-greene\"<\/a>(U.S. Army Photo)<\/p>\n

For too many Americans, the War in Afghanistan often is just an abstraction, something we don’t think about too much, a conflict far away and much too long — the longest war in American history — a random headline that we ignore on the way to clicking on links about overpaid quarterbacks and vacuous celebrities.<\/p>\n

For the extended Trinity family last week, the War in Afghanistan took a terrible, tragic turn, claiming the life of a Trinity son, Major General Harold J. Greene<\/a>. On Tuesday, August 5, Major Greene<\/a> was killed during an “insider attack” on a group of allied officers inspecting troops and training results at an Afghan military academy.\u00a0 He is the highest ranking officer killed in the Afghan-Iraq conflicts.\u00a0 He was in Afghanistan as deputy commanding general of the Combined Security Transition Command — a key figure in trying to pave the way for the end of the U.S. presence in that nation and full empowerment of the Afghan military.\u00a0 He gave his life as part of the endless quest to bring peace and some measure of security to that troubled region.<\/p>\n

The late Eva Shediak Greene, Class of 1950, was General Greene’s<\/a> mother.\u00a0 A History major from Fall River, Massachusetts, she was active in many campus organizations including the International Relations Club.\u00a0 Her Trinilogue<\/em> entry indicates that she loved World Literature and even spoke Arabic.\u00a0 Upon graduation she earned master’s degrees at Boston College and SUNY Albany, and embarked on a career as a teacher, textbook editor and school librarian.\u00a0 She married Harold Greene, moved to the Schenectady area, and raised three sons, of whom General Greene was the oldest.<\/p>\n

I called Mr. Greene, himself an Army veteran, to extend Trinity’s deep condolences, and he seemed glad to know that the Trinity family is with him and his children and grandchildren at this difficult time for the Greene family.\u00a0 The Albany Times Union<\/a>\u00a0 has a particularly nice story with an interview of Mr. Greene about his son.<\/p>\n

General Greene’s <\/a>family has a proud military history.\u00a0 His son Matthew<\/a> is an Army Lieutenant, and his wife Sue Myers <\/a>is a retired Army Colonel and she also taught at the Army War College.<\/p>\n

Trinity’s flag will fly at half staff on Thursday, the day that General Greene will be laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetary.\u00a0 We send our deepest sympathies to his father and family, and remember his mother Eva and the son whose heroism in serving his nation surely made her so proud.\u00a0 We send our thanks and admiration to the Greene family for their patriotism and heroism in fostering the commitment across generations to serve our country in the military.<\/p>\n

Let us also pause in this moment to remember the thousands of military personnel who have died or suffered terrible wounds in these wars, and the countless other people also killed and wounded by war.\u00a0 Let us renew our prayers for peace.<\/p>\n

If you would like to send a message of condolence to the Greene family, please drop a note off at my office or you may email me at president@trinitydc.edu<\/a>, or leave a comment in the box below.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Trinity family sends prayers to the family of Major General Harold J. Greene killed in Afghanistan, the son of Harold and Eva Shediak Greene, Class of 1950.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[508,28],"tags":[1400,45,1398,1399,1397,1300],"class_list":["post-4687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trinity-alumnae","category-war-and-peace","tag-afghan-army","tag-afghanistan","tag-general-harold-greene","tag-insider-attack","tag-major-general-harold-j-greene","tag-war-in-afghanistan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}